Do the Clintons Now Support Jail Time For Perjurers?

Former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton are absolutely outraged that President Bush granted executive clemency to Scooter Libby, recently convicted of making false statements under oath. They obviously believe that Libby should serve his thirty month sentence.

Does that mean that they now think that perjurers should go to jail? Or have they simply forgotten about Bill Clinton's own plea agreement in the last hours of his presidency — for making false statements under oath? Some people would call that perjury.

One would have thought that Hillary and Bill Clinton wouldn't touch the Libby executive clemency issue with a ten-foot pole — for lots of reasons.

After all, Bill Clinton has a well-earned reputation as the king of pardons — granting 140 of them during his last minutes in office — with many going to terrorists, people who had paid Hillary's brothers to arrange for pardons, contributed money or key support to Hillary's Senate campaign, given the Clintons expensive personal gifts, and/or made large contributions to Bill Clinton's Presidential Library. One of the pardons went to Bill's own brother, Roger, while another went to Susan MacDougal, who kept quiet about Clinton during the Whitewater trial.

That's really cronyism, Hillary.

Given the disgraceful Clinton record on pardons, most reasonable people would have kept quiet — especially when Libby's offense was so similar to Bill's own criminal conviction. But the self-righteous former first couple couldn't resist. Once the clemency was announced, Hillary immediately attacked President Bush, saying, "This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice."

Hey, Hillary, do you understand what cronyism really means?

Cronyism is favoritism shown to friends and supporters without regard to their qualifications. And that's what Bill Clinton's pardons were all about. Except, as usual, the Clintons went way over the top. So, in addition to granting pardons to undeserving friends, Bill Clinton also pardoned undeserving strangers who paid his family, friends, campaign coffers, and presidential library.

Now Bill and Hillary claim that his highly controversial pardons were "different" than the Libby clemency.

He's absolutely right ...

The big difference was that many of the Clinton pardons were patently bought and paid for — something event he Clintons don't claim to be the case in the Libby commutation.

Dick Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of 2010: Take Back America. To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com

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